Ideologies of Love at Concerts: Yugoslav Popular Music on Post-Yugoslav Stages

Ideologies of Love at Concerts: Yugoslav Popular Music on Post-Yugoslav Stages Ana Petrov INTRODUCTION: THE AFTERLIFE OF YUGOSLAV POPULAR MUSIC In this article I deal with the ways Yugoslav popular music serves as a means for producing ideologies of love at concerts in the post-Yugoslav era. Less than a decade after the dissolution of Yugoslavia in 1991, sev- eral musicians from the territory of the former country gradually started giving concerts in Belgrade, the capital of the former country. Most of them had been quite popular in Serbia and most of them continued to perform there regularly after 2000; they included the singers Kemal Monteno, Boris Novković, Goran Karan, Massimo Savić, and Josipa Lisac, and groups such as Crvena Jabuka, Hari Mata Hari, and Magazin. There were also many musicians who adamantly refused to perform in Serbia after the wars, the most well-known of them being 41 Oliver Dragojević, Tereza Kesovija and Dino Merlin. However, Tereza Kesovija and Dino Merlin decided to perform in Belgrade in 2011, thus provoking new reactions, especially in the nationalistic discourse, which was particularly (but not only) evident in the case of the sup- porters of Serbian extremist groups. The concerts were even classified as high-risk events. The reactions against these particular musicians were prompted due to both of them having supposedly promoted hate discourse against Serbs, since they were both directly affected by the war.1 Furthermore, some of the first comeback concerts provoked emotional reactions, most commonly of a nostalgic and Yugo-nostalgic nature. There were also a few concerts that included a significant number of performers and produced a moderate but clearly expressed (Yugo)nostalgic atmosphere, such as the concert in honour of Đorđe Novković, which I will discuss below.2 This article puts forward the thesis that audience experience is a relevant and appropriate part of certain musical events.3 It draws on research that shows how the perception of the audience’s role has changed. Instead of the understanding of the audience’s role as being mostly passive, recent research has acknowledged that the audience also contributes to the production of the atmosphere4 and the meaning of certain events (Petrov 2015a, 2016). Setting out to prove the thesis about the relevance of the audience experience, this article is based on research done through participant observation at popular music concerts in Serbia, in addition to discourse analysis of the press relating to particular events. Drawing on the recent tendencies 1 Tereza Kesovija’s house near Dubrovnik was ruined during the bombing of the city by the Yugoslav People’s Army, while Dino was a participant in the war conflicts in Sarajevo (for more on this issue see Petrov 2016). 2 Among the performers, one specific musician profile has drawn the attention of the Serbian audience – musicians from Dalmatia whose music is recognized as “typically Dalmatian”. This kind of pop music regularly elicits positive reactions relating to universal categories (love, the past, youth, and summer), and also can trigger specific Yugo-nostalgic recollections of the past. Two kinds of concerts of this sort have been held in Belgrade in the twenty-first century: those clearly labelled as Dalmatian, such as the “Evenings of Dalmatian songs”, and those given by various singers from Dalmatia (Petrov 2015b). 3 In dealing with the musical event I draw on this concept as defined in Tia DeNora’s approach – as an event that is equivalent to the concept of the social event in social theory (DeNora 2003). 4 Drawing on Teresa Brennan’s concept of “affective atmosphere”, I also want to point to the types of networking in the discourses on certain kinds of music, and the affective atmospheres produced through this networking. According to Brennan, atmosphere is the same as “environment” and it literally “gets into the individual” – something becomes present that was not there before, but it did not originate sui generis: it was not generated solely or sometimes even in part by the individual organism or its genes (Brennan 2004: 1). Ana Petrov 42 in cultural studies, and especially memory studies, collective memory studies, and social memory studies, I wanted to identify the ways in which Yugoslav popular music is intertwined with ideologies of love in post-Yugoslav space and time. It is of crucial importance to empha- sise that the concept of ideology is not considered as a hegemonic dis- cursive narrative that is reflected in a society. Rather, ideology is here understood as a practice of producing everyday life by all agents in a society. With this in mind, this article probes the ways a certain ideology (here the ideology of love) shapes musical practices, and it ad- dresses the issue of networking the concepts of love, Yugoslav music, and memories relating to the Yugoslav past. The audience is analysed as an entity which is capable of producing ostensibly intimate feelings and making them common and public. In this regard, I follow Sara Ahmed’s approach to the analysis of emotions. She sees emotions as a capacity to secure collectives, through the way in which they read the bodies of others. Emotions that are carried through the body work to align subjects with some others and against others, playing a crucial role in overcoming the boundaries between the individual and collective bodies. Thus, emotions are not considered to be a “private matter”, but rather, as Ahmed puts it, they “define the contours of the multiple worlds that are inhabited by different subjects” (Ahmed 2004: 25). I also want to point to the relevance of the theoretical consid- eration of the ideological potential of sound in certain cultural politics. In this regard, it is relevant to emphasize that, although it is of great importance, it is not only the regional association that makes this music work as it does. I draw here on research that deals with the ways certain kinds of music sound (supposedly naturally, i.e. due to the characteristics of the music itself ) in accordance with their cultural background.5 In my research, I do not deal (or at least not only) with the ways in which music reflects a particular cultural politics, but rather focus on the productive ideological function of this sort of music, arguing that the common Yugoslav background contributes to the formation of a specific kind of post-Yugoslav collectivities. From this perspective, I analyse the ways in which the collectivities are made in a specific space, at a certain time, as a result of listening to the same music. The focal question is how the audience is shaped 5 Geoff Mann showed how “raced sound is surely among the more effectively imposed ‘obviousnesses’ that constitute ideology’s ‘effects’: there is little in contemporary American popular culture more ‘obvious’ than the ‘colour’ of music”. Because of the complex cultural and historical background, it is now literally possible to ‘hear’, as the author asserts, “the blackness of hip-hop or soul, the whiteness of heavy metal or country” (Mann 2008: 77). 43 Ideologies of Love at Concerts through the music and what kind of collective feelings are being produced during the concerts. Furthermore, I address the issue of the role of the concerts in the construction of the sentimental remembrance of the past. In constructing love as a political concept, I also concur with Michael Hardt, who states that a political concept of love would, at the minimum, reorient our political discourses and practices in two important ways. Firstly, it would challenge conventional conceptions that separate the logic of political interests from our affective lives and op- pose political reason to the passions. A political concept of love would have to deploy both reason and passion at the same time. Secondly, love is a motor of both transformation and duration or continuity. We lose ourselves in love and open the possibility of a new world, but at the same time love constitutes powerful and lasting bonds (Hardt 2011: 676). With this in mind, I argue here that love is not apolitical and anti-political, but rather a very powerful political force. More specifically, I address a very specific concept of love – love for the former country. There is a large amount of research on the concept of Yugonostalgia. The most generally accepted thesis regarding this issue goes as follows: the past (Yugoslav) experiences – initially very familiar and strongly felt – are lost, but constantly returning to trouble the stable boundaries, representing something that challenges and resists the (spatial and temporal) dichotomies in the former Yu- goslav republics.6 Even though highly controversial and full of con- tradictions, the term itself can be in the broadest sense understood as “nostalgia for Yugoslavia” and for the lost “golden age” (Palmberger 2008: 359). I will use it in this connotation, and I will connect it with the issue of (re)producing feelings of love and thus creating new collectivities via the concert venues.7 YUGOSLAV POPULAR MUSIC AND LOVE? The concept of love is very important in the production of the specific atmospheres at the Belgrade concerts. In order to underscore the relevance of the concept, I will single out two symptomatic indicators 6 Yugonostalgia can be manifested in space (Petrović 2007), time (Volčič 2007, 2009), and people (Bancroft 2009). 7 The role of nostalgia in post-Yugoslav space has been discussed elsewhere, and there are numerous approaches to the concept. I draw here on the authors that understand nostalgia as a phenomenon with emancipatory potencial. See e.g. Velikonja 2009, 2010.

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